The Distribution of Will
by kinnoth
Summary: Draco Malfoy has three sons.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I usually prefer to let my stories stand alone, but this is my first concerted effort at a multi-chapter fic, so I feel it deserves some explanation, or at least a precaution. I am going to try to keep this on schedule; there will be a "projected update" note at the end of each chapter. My goal is to update once every week to two weeks, but keep an eye on the notes at the end of the latest chapter, as they are subject to change.

Also: my short HP fics serve as standalones. Reoccurring characters will not necessarily keep their same characterization.

Please enjoy.

Disclaimer: not mine

* * *

**The Distribution of Will**

_Chapter 1_

Draco Malfoy had, during the course of his brief and unglamorous life, accumulated several hundred thousand galleons in gold and bonds, made several hundred enemies who would love nothing more than to spit on his newly dug grave, met a few dozen people who can call to mind the form of his patronus, and three sons.

The rest is irrelevant; this is about the three of them.

Scorpius Malfoy is the scion of the family. He is his father's spitting image and has inherited much of his aristocratic demeanor though little of his propensity to flaunt it. He needs narrow, silver framed glasses when he reads, but he wears them regularly, if only to stem the steady flow of exclamations of just how much he is his father's son. He is twenty-five years old when his father dies and though he would have been content without his family's fortune, he receives it and guards it warily.

Arcturus Malfoy is very much his mother's son, though he too seems to have struck gold and grey in the game of genetic roulettes. He is twenty-three and does not expect much of his father's estate, as it has always been perfectly clarion that he had been his father's least favorite son. He receives a few thousand pieces of gold – which he promptly spills to girls and drinking – and a tersely worded note never to expect any handouts from his brother the heir, as it has been written into his own conditions that any violation of these terms would mean the forfeit of the sums to an undisclosed tertiary party. Arcturus shrugs, lets soft hands pet his face as he presses his lips to that of a bottle and patiently waits for his mother to die.

Rasalas is the third son, barely out of green and silver, and is summering with his grandmother when word comes by the claws of Scorpius' great eagle-owl. He buries his face into his grandmother's lap and feels small and ashamed as he muffles his sobs in her skirts. She sits stony faced above him, eyes dry and careful and weary as the fingers she threads carefully through his black, black hair.

To Rasalas his father leaves the deeds to one of his smaller estates and an envelope, addressed to him in his secretary's thick, even hand. His father's solicitor looks up at him gravely, offers him his condolences and wishes him well. Rasalas nods numbly and slips the papers into the folds of his cloak, where their weight bumps gently against his side with every step he takes, where his father's weight bears heavy and relentless upon his shoulder.

The funeral is held beneath the bright noon sun of early August. Rasalas sits stiffly behind his mother and eldest brother, holds his grandmother's cool, smooth fingers in his hand. It is halfway through the service before he realizes he cannot distinguish which of them is taking and which is providing comfort. His father's various business associates – old, balding men, young upstarts – parade across the podium. They say brief, ingenuous things about the keenness of his father's business sense, the shrewdness of his mind, his dignity in office, how much they'll regret his unexpected passing, their sympathy towards his beautiful widow.

A tall, thin man loiters awkwardly to the side of this procession, lingering and jostling as if unsure whether to stay or leave. Rasalas catches him staring intently into the crowd, pale gaze weary and still compared to his gawky, swaying body. Their eyes meet for half a moment before the man looks away, pulling his hat lower over his dark hair. Rasalas looks back, some time later, but he is no longer there.

After the coffin has been lowered into the ground, after the fistfuls of earth are thrown, the crowd begins steadily to disperse, his brother Arcturus leading the way, young witches – daughters of the well-wishers, undoubtedly – hanging off each arm. Rasalas's grandmother is the last to leave him. Her face is impassive, eyes worn and smooth like pebbles in a stream. She seems no more affected by the death of her only son than she would by the passing of a sudden rainstorm in spring, but Rasalas can see the weight and measure of her grief as she touches the fingertips of one hand to his face and brushes the gravestone fleetingly with the other.

It is just him now, standing at the foot of the plot of newly turned earth, white funeral flowers moving silently in the late afternoon breeze. He feels as if he should have something to say, but nothing comes to mind.

"I'm sorry for your loss," a man's voice says from behind him. Rasalas turns and sees the dark man from before, shifting his weight from foot to foot beneath the shade of a nearby tree. Rasalas can see him a little more clearly, now that he doesn't blend in with the throng of black and grey from earlier. His robes are a little too big for his frame, his collar a little crooked and of a material and design clearly mass-produced. He wears wire-framed glasses atop a thin, slightly crooked nose and his eyes are very, very green. Rasalas walks over, stands by the man.

"I don't believe I know you, sir," he says, his voice impeccably polite. The man takes a darting glance at his face. "My name is Rasalas Malfoy, and I encourage you to head down the hill, in the way of the carriages. They will take you back to the Manor, where refreshment will be served –"

"I'm not here for your sandwiches," the man snaps before hastily apologizing, "I'm sorry – Rasalas, isn't it? Rasalas." He pauses as if to ruminate this realization. "It's just that I came here to talk to you." Rasalas blinks.

"As I've said, sir, I don't believe I know your name," he says carefully.

The man shakes his head, mutters, "No, I don't suppose you would." He reaches up, and removes his hat. "I don't think we've met. I'm Harry Potter. I went to school with your father." He holds out a hand, and the breeze picks up enough to play through his disheveled black hair, and Rasalas catches a glimpse of that infamous jagged scar, livid beneath his fringe.

"Mr. Potter! Sir!" he exclaims, quickly reaching back to shake the man's hand. "I'm sorry, truly; I can't believe I didn't recognize you, I mean, my brother –"

"—was once best mates with my son, Albus," Potter says, smiling ruefully. "I don't think they've spoken for a number of years now."

"But, sir, my father," Rasalas continues. "We never knew, I mean, we'd all heard about how you'd saved him, back during the War, but he'd never mentioned you outside of that. I can't believe you were friends and he never even said anything!"

Potter looks away, smile flattening into a look of practiced chagrin. "I can't say we were particularly close," he says, "but your father and I did understand one another, for a while." He looks past Rasalas' shoulder and Rasalas turns, following his gaze. The carriages have driven off, by this point, a long line of black, horseless cars disappearing into the horizon.

"Anyway," Potter says. "We'd made our peace, your father and I. We'd not spoken for years when one day he owls me out of the blue, asking to meet. It was his mother, he explained. She'd come to understand that a certain lot had come into my possession some years ago, and she wanted to know what I planned on doing with it. Naturally, I said I wasn't doing anything. It was never really mine, anyway; my godfather –"

He looks pained, here, old memories of a distant past rushing to the forefront. Rasalas remembers that his father had occasions like this, briefly and infrequently, but sometimes when Scorpius or Arcturus or he came back for holiday, wrapped snuggly in their black uniform robes and house colors, he'd get that look, an uncharacteristic strain to the corners of his eyes, like he was trying not to remember.

"It wasn't mine," Potter concludes. "So your father, he asks if I'd be willing to part with it, to give it back because his wife, your mother, was pregnant again and they were hoping…" He trails off again here. Rasalas looks up at him expectantly.

The Man Who Prevailed, he wonders to himself. They'd read all about him in their textbooks at Hogwarts, spent entire terms analyzing the feats of this singular individual who had saved the wizarding world again and again over a period of a little less than ten years. All while he was even younger than Rasalas is now!

Rasalas looks at him, the man standing in front of him, and a little of that glamour is stripped from the glory that is "Harry Potter." This man is ordinary; painfully so. His shoulders are much too narrow to have comfortably carried the hope of the entire world; his hands are overlarge, fingers too skinny. He is not even particularly heroic looking, thin lips and a perpetually frazzled look to his upkeep.

"This is supposed to be yours, anyway," Potter says finally, reaching into his rumpled cloak and pulling out a threadbare box of red velvet. Rasalas takes it into his hands, runs the pads of his fingers over the cloth. "He wanted me to give this to you; told me to keep it until after he died because he didn't want his sons to know," Potter recites, steady eyes gone darting and uncomfortable. "He didn't want them to think that he loved any one of them less than the others." Rasalas peers up at Harry Potter again, but he doesn't seem to notice, his expression lax and far away.

"Thank you," Rasalas says, slipping the box into the inner pocket of his own cloak. "And thank you for coming all this way for this. Are you sure you wouldn't like to come down to the Manor? You could at least have a drink before you leave."

Potter shakes his head. "No, no. This isn't really my sort of crowd, you know? And I don't suppose a lot of them will be too happy to see me. Besides, it was only ever your father who –" He shakes his head. "Thank you, Ra-lasas, but I really should be going now." He takes his weight off the trunk of the tree and is almost down the hill when he turns back and calls, "If you want my advice, you should burn it. The place… it's not the same as it used to be. There are things…. You can either keep it or burn it, but if you keep it, know that it isn't like it used to be. Not at all."

* * *

She had seen him at the funeral; it was hard not to. He stood out in the sea of sober colors and insincere men: The Boy Who Lived, no, The Man Who Won. Everything, in the end, however briefly before he'd cast it away for that family he'd always wanted, that normalcy and anonymity he still convinces himself into thinking he finally has. Foolish child, Narcissa thinks, like her son had been. Making grand gestures to uncomprehending, disinterested audiences and expecting applause. They could afford to be so selfish, she thinks, climbing into the carriage at the head of the procession, tucking her skirts around her legs. They were young and the world had just been laid at their feet, conquered and trampled and shattered but wholly new and reborn. They'd had all the time in the world and the world would be more than happy to look the other way to give it to them. Except.

Narcissa sighs, covers her old hands with the soft skin of leather gloves. She had been young once too, but she hadn't nearly their opportunity. Her husband had turned out to be a fine man, self-serving and slippery, but gentle with her, doting with her son. Still, they had been happy, even without an ounce of selfishness on either of their parts. Well, that was it, wasn't it? The one thing she regrets about her youth – she'd never got to be selfish, to feel like the only thing in the world that mattered. Her son though, had been loyal and dutiful to his mother, possibly even spoilt her in ways she had not been accustomed to as the wife of the scion of an ancient family. He'd given her choice, and bid her choose the most important thing in the world so that he may give it to her.

And she could only think of one thing.

Perhaps she just isn't meant for selfishness, she muses. Perhaps that is one nature that had not been bred into her. The carriage jumps, wheels crushing unevenly over the gravel trail below. Narcissa sighs again, straightening her spine with a succession of quiet pops. She is old now and what is done has been done. She feels her heart growing weaker with each pulsing beat, feels her age upon her every time she falls asleep before her books or forgets where she put her stitching. One day she is going to fall asleep, she knows, closing her eyes and remembering the texture of her son's hair, back when he was a boy. One of these days she will fall asleep and she will forget to wake. Then perhaps her heart will finally find the freedom she'd denied it while she was awake.

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_Next update: 10.4.08_


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: not mine

**The Distribution of Will**

_Chapter 2_

Rasalas returns after the repast to his room in what is now his brother's house, empties his pockets and tosses the box onto the smooth, dark wood of his desk where it clatters amongst piles of his old textbooks and battered quills. He glances at it as he sets about his room, stands the letter up against it. Nimbly, he pulls loose the knotted black silk of his ascot, pieces of crushed brocade dripping to the floor until all he has on is the simple linen of his dressing gown. He feels uncomfortably naked, too light without the layers and constrictions of his formalwear. He picks his way across the room, rummages through his closet for a shirt, a pair of trousers, then remembers that all of his clothes have been packed away for his summer overseas, and that his wardrobe is bare and unlived in.

He feels, for a moment, at a loss; he wonders at the state of his father's closet, whether the houselves had been so alacritous with the bundling and putting away of his clothes, his belongings.

Suddenly he remembers being small again, younger than he has been in a long time: hugging the wall at the back of his parents' wardrobe, pretending to be a boggart or some nonsense; peeking from between the legs of his father's suits, hiding himself in the long skirts of his father's robes. He remembers beaming, pulling terrible faces and his father, who never could paint shock and surprise from across his features as well as he thought he could, looking down at him with his brief, tight, though genuinely fond smile.

The memory pulls at something buried deep within his chest, makes him feel bitter and empty, but he won't cry again; his grandmother had looked the other way the other time, possibly even forgiven him, but Rasalas still remembers the doctrine and dogma of unwritten family laws: Malfoys do not show their cards, even when it's family at the table. Even if they are alone at the table.

Rasalas wraps himself in something thick and dusty, far too heavy for the late summer weather but it's all he cares to find. A pile of papers stacked on his desk suddenly plummets, knocked from their precarious balance and rustling like leaves when they fan across the floor. Rasalas looks over perfunctorily, and then remembers the red velvet box, still sitting mournful and worn amid pieces of his life. More hesitantly than he is perhaps accustomed to, Rasalas crosses the room. He fidgets a bit with the letter first, running his fingers across its seams and the vivid, melted, wax seal. Now is as good a time as any, he supposes, and pulls closed the curtains and bolts the door.

The envelope is of thick, ivory parchment paper and is perhaps a little heavier than he would expect of a package its size. He weighs it absently, wonders what it could possibly be. Then he digs his nail under the seal and lifts, the wax coming off the paper in a series of dull snaps. Several sheets of paper are contained inside, the first sheets newer and more cleanly folded than the others.

The first is a letter, which Rasalas holds with careful reverence as he recognizes his father's familiar, narrow script.

"Rasalas," it reads.

"I hope this missive finds you well. That you are reading this means that I am dead, but I take comfort in the youth and health of my sons - the Malfoy family will live on for generations through the lives and children of those who carry our august name.

"The birth and survival of strong sons is the greatest blessing to an esteemed house such as ours since, as you know, such is not always the case; not every line continues on through its sons and some families are cut at their heads, ancestral legacies abruptly ended through mishap or misfortune.

"My mother, your grandmother, is the last surviving member of the ancient and noble house of Black. With her death will be the end of not only a bloodline, but its legacy, and its gifts.

"This leaves you, Rasalas. You are the hope for that dying legacy, new blood and a new beginning. The gifts and secrets that could not be mine and can not be your brothers' are yours, Rasalas, the treasures only a son of the Black family can reclaim.

"I hope this letter finds you well, Rasalas Abraxas Malfoy Black, because this is where you leave us, my son, and find your own beginning."

For a moment, Rasalas forgets to breathe and loses all feeling past his knees. He inelegantly slumps into a chair and stares vacantly at the black lines of ink on parchment as if they were a foreign alphabet from a distant culture where men are not who they think they are and sons do not know their real names until after their fathers' deaths. He fumbles for the other contents of the envelope, his father's letter fluttering to the ground, momentarily forgotten.

The first sheet that meets his fingers is a birth certificate, proffered proof of his father's claims. Rasalas racks his memory, trying to recall the last time he'd seen the documentation of his own birth; he'd always simply assumed he'd seen it before, he realizes. It'd never occurred to him that something so mundane as his own name would have secrets hidden within it. The ministry's seal is entirely real, Rasalas faintly realizes, and next to it an elaborate coat of arms that is distinctly not that of the Malfoy family. It's the one on the box.

He is not a Malfoy, he is a Black, a member of a dead family because his grandmother had wished it and his father had honored it and it was _real_ - he wasn't who they'd said he was; he wasn't who _he'd_ said he was, but someone entirely _else_, entirely _different_.

Rasalas finally takes notice of the box, its dusty cloth and tarnished silver seal. It too contains a roll of parchment, but this is ancient, obviously charmed, held against time more by magic than any physical element. He unfurls it delicately, refusing to let his shock overwhelm him, and keeps his hands steady. The scroll lists the Deeds of the House of Black, as ennobled by an ancient king of a long lost time. The list is long, complex, with properties and sums and kingly and courtly positions, most obsolete, crossed out by generations of steady hands wielding black ink. What is left untouched are small fortunes, present day investments, patch-work tracts of land across empty countryside. And a manor house, Grimmauld Place.

It is his now, Rasalas realizes, carefully rolling the deed and the certificate and the letter and placing them all into the narrow red box. It's all his, an ancient fortune revived by new blood. Secrets and gifts, the privileges and burdens of his new family.

* * *

Scorpius sits with a ledger spread over his desk and another in his lap, an untidy habit left over from his school days. There are other people he can have do the tedious things like ledgers for him; the entire estate is his now; he can certainly afford it. He does it himself anyway, because, as he'd told his father, it's one less middleman to the result. His father had been most pleased with him, put a hand on his shoulder and said that he had excellent ethic, that he should remember this diligence when it was his turn at the family helm.

What he doesn't say is that he finds it cathartic, something he can mindlessly do with his hands while he lets his mind wander.

He has always been the good son, considerate and meticulous, achieving in every expectation laid out for him: prefect for Slytherin, captain of the house team, perfect on his OWLs and NEWTs, beating out Albus Potter for position of Head Boy. Scorpius had been the one their father could turn to when an investment was hedging into trouble, the one their mother could ask to watch little Rasalas when there was company, the one who stayed out of the petty sibling quibbles that pocked the walls with jinxes gone awry and had their mother screaming for his brothers to either solve their issues like civilized human beings or to take it outside.

After his father's death, he had been the one to assemble the notices, arrange the services. When his father's solicitor had presented him with the deeds to the Malfoy house, Scorpius had not been surprised; he deserved this fortune, most certainly – it was his earned right. When his father died it had felt like an end, and he had grieved properly and tearlessly, but he had known what it meant. It was an end to two lives – to his father's stay on this earth and also to his own; the beginning of his permanent stewardship of his family's legacy. It is his reward, his quid pro quo after years of a job well done. But it doesn't fit. It is what he has, but he can't say for certain it's what he wants.

A quiet knock on the door brings him out thoughts. He places the quill on its stand, puts the cap back on the inkwell and lifts the book off his lap. "Yes?" he calls. A flick of his wand unlocks the door with a sharp click and Rasalas peers in, clearly hesitant.

"I'm not disturbing you, am I?" he asks, slipping inside and shutting the door quietly behind him.

"No, no, of course not." Scorpius sits back against the leather cushions of the chair, stretches the crick from the side of his neck. "I was just going over the books for last month, keeping things up to date."

Rasalas grins a little, stepping further into the study and out of the dark corner by the door. The candles that hover above his desk flicker a bit at the sudden cross breeze. "They have spells that do that for you now, you know," Rasalas says uncertainly. "All you have to do is list the numbers. Or if you're really old-school, there are always such creatures called 'accountants.'" He makes circles out of his hands, brings them to his face. "Little men with bald heads and big glasses. They thrive on the work that drives any other magical creature insane." He chuckles at his own joke, eyes his brother watchfully.

Scorpius inclines his head, brings up the tight corners of his lips. "Thank you, but I prefer it my way. Besides, it cuts out the middleman," he parrots.

Rasalas grimaces. "Of course," he replies and edges himself down on one of the many fat, cushiony couches that line the study. Scorpius' smile softens into a friendlier, less formal variation of itself. He sends a candle over across the room, and his brother's face is lit with the same shifting glow that surrounds his desk, drawing him into the little circle of light. Rasalas smiles and ducks his head, acknowledging. He shifts his shoulders, deliberately spreads his feet and folds his hands, trying for all his worth to look a little more at home.

They sit like this for a moment. Rasalas fidgets with the edge of his shirt and keeps his face unnaturally at ease. Scorpius can't think of anything to break the silence other than canned formalities, and it seems a little strange to ask after his youngest brother's health. Finally, Scorpius clears his throat. "Is there something I can help you with?" he asks. Rasalas looks about idly, eyes settling on everything but his brother's face.

"Ah, not much," Rasalas says. "It was just that I was thinking about the whole 'Ancient and Most Noble House of Black' business." He hesitates here, pulls an overstuffed pillow into his lap and begins to fidget with it, twiddling its tassels around his finger. "I mean," he begins, stopping; Scorpius waits patiently for him to start again.

"I don't really know," he concludes abruptly. "I just don't understand it. I know that the last of grandmother's family died in the last Wizarding War, and I know the Blacks are a really old, really great family but it's just –" Rasalas slides his hands through his hair, huffs a bit and looks away, a wry expression overlaid upon his profile. His brother looks like he'd badly like a stiff drink, Scorpius notes; but of course he'd never ask, and Scorpius would never presume to offer.

"It's just, why me, Scorpius?" Rasalas finally looks up, eyes wide and fatally earnest. "Why not you, or, why not Arcturus?"

Scorpius looks back at his youngest brother and is genuinely shocked. He has honestly no reply. It's Rasalas, he thinks, faintly bewildered. Rasalas, who, with his black hair and blue eyes, has always been different, has never looked a thing like any of them. Rasalas who hadn't been particularly good at any subject in school, who lacked even any great personal failings to speak of. Rasalas the baby, who had enjoyed the light of their father's attention and the warmth of their mother's love from afar, where the intensity of it that had burnt and smothered his brothers had dissipated to a mild glow. Rasalas who always did a little less than what was expected of him – who was nominated for prefect, who was an alternate for the quidditch team – who, despite having gotten into Slytherin, has always lacked a certain hardness associated with that House, whose determination has always come off a little less like ambition, and more like curiosity.

Scorpius has no answer, and can't begin to imagine why he'd want one. So instead, he says, "I guess because Malfoy Manor has been recently fireproofed, whereas if Father had given the House of Black to Arcturus, he'd have burned it down and himself with it by next Tuesday." Rasalas looks indistinctly hurt by his brother's flippancy, scowls petulantly with his mouth rather than his eyes.

"I mean really, Scorpius," he says.

"So do I," Scorpius replies, voice suddenly harsh. Rasalas looks at his brother in surprise, but his expression has not changed, still mild-mannered and impeccably considerate. "It doesn't matter the reasons why, Rasalas," Scorpius continues, voice carelessly light again. "This is Father's gift to you, not to me, or to Arcturus, so why don't you stop whingeing like a child and make the most of it?"

Rasalas' expression freezes into a tight mask over his face. Scorpius notes that his fingers have balled in to his palm, and that his nails must be cutting shallow groves into his skin. "You don't have to be a complete arse about it," he says, getting stiffly to his feet. "I just thought you'd know better what to do about it, that's all."

You have no idea, Scorpius replies in his head. You've never had to. You can't even begin to know what it's like.

Rasalas makes his way slowly to the door, the gradations of darkness swallowing him whole until he is just another flickering shadow against the wall.

"I was going to ask if you'd help me Apparate some of my things, but I think I can manage. Sorry for bothering you. _Really_." The door opens again, the pale light and tinny noises of the world outside filtering into the room before Rasalas steps out and shuts the door behind him as he goes, considerably louder this time.

Scorpius, incidentally, is being a complete arse. He knows it but, around the hard, tight ball of anger in his chest, finds it hard to care. Delicately, he adjusts his glasses over the bridge of his nose, trails his finger down the page until he finds the spot where he left off. Rasalas has never liked being the youngest, but that's always been the case; none of them would choose to be anything of what they are, but these things are beyond the control of a mere individual. They've all had to make the best of their lots in life, and Rasalas is more than old enough to join that party.

* * *

Next update: 10.11.08


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: not mine

**The Distribution of Will**

_Chapter 3_

"Another round!" he calls, and the room erupts in hearty cheers. Arcturus digs into his coat pocket and pulls out a handful of gold. He flings them across the bar where they land and clatter heavily on the stained wood. The barmaid gives him a slow, salacious smile as she makes a great show of pulling her collar open, where the coins disappear one by one into the bodice of her dress.

"Coming right up, luv," she tells him, bending unnecessarily low to collect the last Galleon from Arcturus' dangling fingers. He leers and pulls the coin suddenly away, lunging forward and stealing a kiss from her dark, smeared lips. "Prick!" She laughs and squeezes her way across the room, hips swaying suggestively.

"So then what happened, Archie?" Arcturus settles back into his seat and circles his arm carelessly around the skinny wench on his left, who looks up at him with watery, bloodshot blue eyes. The crowd around them roars with unrelated laughter; Arcturus feels himself being caught up in it, nonetheless, and laughs along.

"And then!" he exclaims, clamping his tankard between his lips and draining it messily. "And then I took her around the waist," he does so accordingly with the little blonde whore, "and I swung her around to my lap," the girl squeals, giggling madly at the demonstration, "and I said to her 'Rosie, you are the most beautiful girl in the room and I want to take you to bed.'"

The blonde giggles a bit more and makes herself comfortable against his chest. "So that's how you bedded Rosaline Weasley, is it, Archie?" she asks, fingers casually worming their way beneath his coat and into his pockets.

Arcturus not very gently slaps her hand out of the way. "And that's how I bedded and fucked Rosie Weasley," he declares, and the crowd laughs again, calling for more and whooping their lewd congratulations.

"As if she'd ever." A dark mutter cuts under the noise and the crowd lulls to a silence; even the music seems to dim, "Red-Fox" Rosaline's lilting voice sputtering to a halt on the recorder in the corner. Arcturus eyes flick idly beneath his heavy, hooded lids to rest on the single voice of protest. The man is thin and lanky, and he sits hunched with his back to the rest of the room, nursing his drink between his cupped hands. His hair is dark and disheveled, as if he's just walked in from the weather outside, but his ill-fitted cloak is dry and the mud on his boots is cracked and nearly scraped clean.

Arcturus knows him.

"Albus!" he proclaims, roughly shoving the girl off his lap and swaying to his feet. "Albus, Albus, Ally, Al, Sev! How are you, my son-of-a-famous-man brother?" He swings around on his heel, waves his right hand towards the crowd while fisting his left in the folds of Albus' cloak ostentatiously for balance. "Oi, everyone, listen, listen. This right here is my brother's friend – or is it ex-friend now, Ally Sev? I can never remember – Albus Severus fuckin' Potter!"

He yanks suddenly and Potter stumbles from his chair, tripping over its legs and his own. He would have ended up with his knees on the filthy floor, but Arcturus' grip is unrelenting and steady as steel. "You should have seen them, completely inseparable, the best, best of friends," Arcturus is saying. "Al here; Achilles to Scorpius' Patroclus, Dumbledore to his Grindelwald, Magius to his Huma!" Arcturus turns around and fixes Albus in the eye; his drunken leer is suddenly razor edged, his wild stare manic and red. "Or was that the other way around, Potter?"

Potter rips away from Arcturus' grip. "I never touched your brother, Malfoy," he says, and Arcturus smiles thinly at his valiant attempt to keep his voice steady, to keep his fear and guilt from painting themselves red across his face.

"Of course you didn't." His laughter is more of a bark than a laugh. Potter twists away from his hands again, but he's run out of room, and Arcturus is quicker than he looks. He has him cornered.

Arcturus drops his voice to a murmur, just out of earshot of the nearest drunk, just below the hiss and mutter of the increasingly uneasy crowd. "I never liked you, Potter, but big brother did, didn't he?" Arcturus can feel his own breath against his face, Potter's mixed in, sour and quick. "And if you think I never fucked Rosie Weasley – which I did, by the way; until she screamed and begged and forgot her own filthy name – I want you to look me in the eye, here, now, and tell me again you never broke my brother's frigid little heart."

Potter's eyes flare wide and he breathes out quick and fast. Arcturus knows what's coming; he can sense it in the tightening of Potter's forearm and the shift of his shoulder. But Potter's been drinking firewhisky, and Arcturus has been in enough bar fights to know that Potter's had just enough to be at the threshold for stupid bravery; Arcturus has played the drunkard enough to know that Potter thinks just because he stinks of alcohol means he's drunk it all.

"Go on," he whispers, pulling in close and watching Potter's pupils swallow the green of his eyes. "Are you going to hit me, bitch? Are you?"

"That's quite enough Master Arcturus," says a gruff voice from behind him. Arcturus is swiftly flipped around and face to face with a tall, burly man – one of the newly hires, a Goyle maybe, or a distant Rosier cousin. Potter squirms past them out into the open again, breath fast and green eyes very wide. Arcturus leers at him again as Rosier-Goyle leads him stiffly out of the tavern by the elbow.

The storm from before has chilled and muted to a fine mist; it catches like dew in the spider-fine strands of Arcturus' hair where it glimmers and drips with each staggering step. He can still feel Potter's building tremble beneath his palms, see the shaky hard sheen he'd cobbled over his face. Coward, he thinks, licking the taste of taste of rain and cheap liquor from his lips. Shamelessly playing the hero, just like his father.

"Wait, wait," Arcturus hears from inside the dark comfort of the carriage car. He scissors his fingers between the pale cotton curtain across the window and peers out. Potter has followed them out, caught Rosier-Goyle's cloak with one slim hand.

"You work for him, don't you?" he hears, sees Rosier-Goyle nod his thick, neck-less head. "Could you tell him –" Potter bites the inside of his cheek, hesitates and Arcturus sneers, closes his eyes and leans his head against the soft lining on the carriage wall. "Could you just say…"

"Master Scorpius will receive a full report of the situation, Mr. Potter," Rosier-Goyle says in his slow, heavy voice. The carriage rocks then as Goyle-Rosier climbs into the driver's seat, and Arcturus affords one final look outside the window.

Potter stands dimly lit against the dirty yellow lights of the tavern behind him, ankle deep in mud and shit, looking forlornly after Arcturus' carriage as it jostles down the street and around the corner. Completely pathetic, Arcturus thinks, resting his forehead against the cool glass and closes his eyes. He really doesn't understand what his brother's seen in him.

* * *

Next update: 10.12.08


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Sorry to those who read the update yesterday; the chapter order has been changed. The new section you're looking to read is actually labeled "Chapter 3"

Disclaimer: not mine

**The Distribution of Will**

_Chapter 4_

Grimmauld Place is cursed. Protection spells are natural for a wizarding dwelling, layers of shields and barriers that cloak the home in a circle of warmth and secrecy.  
Grimmauld Place, however, is cursed; thrice hexed from the outside and possibly several from within, probably to err on the side of caution. Rasalas arrives with two trunks at hand; one is filled with the belongings he could not think to part with; the other is filled with books.

When the front door fails to yield to any coaxing or prodding Rasalas can come up with, even with his admittedly generous repertoire of hexes, it becomes clear which of his belongings will be the more useful. The door finally cracks beneath a particularly heavy bombardment of anti-locking spells and all-purpose Alohamoras, and he pushes his way in, the dust and murk of the place immediately sweeping upon him in unrelenting waves. Rasalas spends his first twenty minutes in this place he will probably call home coughing, waving his hands in front of his face and trying not too swallow too much of whatever it is that clogs his throat.

The curls of dust finally swirl to a settle, though Rasalas still has to move gently through the front hall, as if they were a million dozing children just put to bed. The wallpaper, he can see, was at one time rich and textured, probably a deep red threaded through with gold and green, though it has faded and peeled to creams and browns. There is a massive hole in the marbled floor at the foot of the shattered staircase, smaller blast marks lining the walls and ceiling and cracks connecting them like lines drawn on constellation map. Rasalas has read about the various battles of the Second Wizarding War, written meter long essays about them but he, despite his proximity to not a few major players, has never quite imagined it so vividly.

He can see the jinxes being thrown, chipping and scorching the marble and granite and oak, hoarse shrieking above the dust, bloodless death amid flashes of terrible green light. Was this the very air the defenders of the wizarding world gasped as they scrambled to shut out the onslaught of Death Eaters? Was this the very ground that shook when the legendary Albus Dumbledore and He Who Still Shall Not Be Named met and clashed and put the boom of lightning and thunder to shame?

On one hand, Rasalas wants to keep that history, trace it with his fingers and his imagination and make it real. He wants to wonder at the heroism that stains these walls, the villainy, the simple black and white convictions of it. On the other, he can so clearly realize the luxury and privilege these halls once represented. Whereas his father's home, the Malfoy manor, had been of a brand of elegance bought and paid for, the atmosphere here is that of old sensibilities, pride and careful tending reaching back centuries before it fell in such disrepair. Not that it can't be restored, Rasalas thinks, digging through his trunk again, trying to think of renewment spells more complicated and precise than "reparo." Nothing that happens can't be undone.

* * *

Next update: 10.25.08


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Are the short, semi-weekly chapters starting to annoy you? Would you like longer, more substantial updates? Or do you prefer the "lite" version that updates more often? Vote by comment!

Disclaimer: not mine

**The Distribution of Will**

_Chapter 5_

Arcturus takes his father's death fairly well, as far as that goes. So he drinks a little more, is a little more generous about dropping the family name, is a little less careful about letting pretty faced girls fleece him for what he's carrying, but that's hardly earth-shattering behavior for him. Even Scorpius, who has made a habit of making strategic "donations" to certain less than reputable institutions to keep his brother's name out of media less respectable than "Witch's Weekly" doesn't bat an eye when Arcturus is dragged from the gutters of Knockturn Alley four times in a week.

He does, however, make great endeavor to talk his brother's ear off.

"I don't understand why you persist in doing this," Scorpius hisses. His voice is always higher in the mornings after nights like these, pitched and slightly sibilant as he knocks around his brother's room, banging into things and shoving the curtains aside despite Arcturus' low groaning protestations.

When he's trying not to shout, he sounds like their father did, Arcturus thinks, and also: Lousy wanker; he probably hasn't even gotten laid since after Hogwarts, when all the Slytherin girls still gushed on and on about _that _Scorpius Malfoy. Arcturus sinks his head deeper into his pillows as the world pounds unnaturally loud around him.

"What did you say?" Scorpius yanks the covers from over his brother's body and Arcturus' world pitches suddenly, making him gag. So he'd said it out loud. Hem. That was new.

"Filthy slime," his brother spits. Arcturus doesn't need to look at his face to know that he's absolutely incensed, his eyes all bunched up in the corners and mouth a hard flat line over his pointed chin. It doesn't take a lot to make his brother angry, Arcturus knows, but it takes a meteor crashing into the house of the latest investor, or a two week notice of the impending implosion of the known universe, or a look at Arcturus' face after a night on the town, to make him show it. Arcturus blinks up blearily, feeling his stomach churn and the back of his throat begin to work furiously.

"I should throw you out of the house," Scorpius snarls. He grabs hold of Arcturus' soiled collar and hauls him to his feet. "I should have you disinherited. I should let all those yellow papers just print all that trash they've collected about you and let you be dragged down to the level of filth you've come so to _enjoy_." Arcturus stumbles on his own feet and flails madly at the rubbish bin in front of him, choking and gagging until all of that "dubious substance" empties out of him with a sour stench. "You are a disgrace to your name," Scorpius says and snatches his hands violently out of his brother's hair.

Arcturus winces as he hears several fine strands snap between the angry curls of his brother's fingers. "Yeah, I know, 'traitor to my house,' 'sinner of my blood,' 'a curse to you and your little dog too,' yadda, yadda. Do you do "a wizard, giant, and vampire walk into a bar" jokes too? I love those." Scorpius hisses through his teeth, breathes deeply to calm himself down.

He sounds like a deflating balloon when he does that, Arcturus wants to tell him, but then he might get really angry and leave. Then who'd close the curtains?

"I don't understand why you do this," he finally says, voice level and hard as a board of slate, his words grating like old chalk. Arcturus rolls his eyes. He _wouldn't_.

"What's there to understand, big brother?" His smile is lopsided, angle shifting messily every time he changes the slant of his slump against the wall. "Someone's gotta be the disgrace to our name right? There's gotta be one of us who's so interminably fucked up that their descendents will refuse to trace their blood through them. Now, would you like that honorable position, Scorpius? Because if you would, just give the word. I'll start acting all prim and proper; might even wear a hair bow every now and then, if you'd find me one that _properly _brings out my eyes. And then maybe I could borrow that stick you have shoved up your ass right now, big brother, seeing as I'd be getting laid maybe once a decade. Or maybe I could just get Albus Potter to do it for me, I mean, I'm sure he'd be glad to, after all, we look _so _similar –"

The back of his brother's hand is just as hard and bony as it looks, Arcturus realizes as the side of his face crashes into the floor. Arcturus dazedly fingers the spreading soreness just above his jaw.

That's also new, he thinks, but he supposes he might've deserved it. His vision filters red; knowing this doesn't make him any less angry.

"You simple, pathetic _fuck_," Scorpius breathes. "You _dare_. You actually think I'd let you just spread your filth around like this _in my house_." He gathers himself to his nearly imposing pose of righteous wrath and he looks as though he might just sweep impressively out of the room, but Arcturus won't be stopped.

"I don't see what difference it makes where I spread my filth, big brother," he calls glibly after Scorpius' retreating back, "seeing as you've spread your legs like a panting whore every time he's called. 'Oh, Albus,'" he moans, rolling his eyes back into his head and pitching his voice into a crackling falsetto. "'Oh, Albus, fuck me, Albus! Straight up the arse, Albus! I love it, Albus! I love your –"

Scorpius can move a lot faster than he appears to be able to, and Arcturus finds himself being reminded of this always at the most inopportune times. He's also much stronger than his pale, spindly frame would suggest, Arcturus notes as he feels blood pool in his face and his toes dangle to scrape the ground.

"Well?" he croaks, eying his brother sideways from between Scorpius' white knuckles. "You going to hit me? Choke me? Make me regret I was ever born? Kill me?"

Scorpius' face is perfectly still but for the stiffening of his eyelids and the slight flare of his nostrils. "No," he says, delicately, barely a breath behind the word, but he holds, frozen like a pillar of salt, until Arcturus cease to struggle and his vision becomes white and faint. He lets go abruptly, sends Arcturus crumpling to the ground, gasping and coughing.

"I have been very generous with you, haven't I, Arcturus?" Arcturus looks up from his elbows, eyes red, coughing wetly while loosing the neck of his robes. "I've been very lenient. A good older brother." He squats down, sits on his heels and tilts his head to the side in a way that set the sharp grey of his eyes over the rim of his glasses. "You know I don't have to be, don't you, Arcturus? I don't have to be kind or good or lenient. I don't have to be anything I don't want to be, especially now. And so -- "

Scorpius smiles in a deliberate, charming way that has settled the nerves of a dozen anxious investors and softened the knees of a hundred hopeful girls. "— sit up, Arcturus, groveling doesn't become you. And so." His teeth are even paler than his lips, Arcturus notes, as he hears, "The next time you leave this house, don't bother coming back. Do you understand me, Arcturus?"

Scorpius doesn't really wait for an answer, just sweeps out and shuts the door briskly behind him. It's probably below him, Arcturus thinks. He feels another wave of nausea undulate from his throbbing headache to the pit of his stomach and he vomits again, this time pure bile.

* * *

Next update: 11.1.08 (or is it?)


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: not mine

**The Distribution of Will**

_Chapter 6_

Rasalas discovers the Hall of Portraits rather on accident. Grimmauld Place is huge and, though elegantly furnished, is clumsily organized. Doors never seem to lead to where one would expect them. Rasalas had been trying knobs from the dining hall into the kitchen, looking for that one corridor that should have lead straight to the overgrown and faintly vicious garden out back when he finally finds one that yields, and finds himself in a gallery of ancient faces.

They all stare at him for blank moments, figures in vivid oils and glossy acrylics dim in the meager light that fills the doorway, and then begin shouting at him at once. The noise is deafening. Rasalas clamps his hands to his ears, dropping his wand, which rolls sluggishly further into the room.

As if a switch had been flipped, the entire hall bursts into a sharp grey light. Rasalas blinks furiously, faint black spots swimming behind his eyelids. When his vision clears he sees just how improbably enormous the hall seems. It looks like it was at one point intended to be some sort of ballroom; dusty chandeliers swing from the high ceiling, velvet draping hangs decoratively from the marble columns. Someone had turned it into a gallery though, and as massive as it is, Rasalas still can't make out the color of the wallpaper; portraits cling to every marginally flat surface, the smallest roughly the size of a piece of parchment paper, larger ones the full height of a full-grown man.

Rasalas shouts for silence and is eventually granted it, however grudgingly.

The period lasts maybe four seconds before it is shrilly shattered by the portrait of the old man in the black and silver robes when he demands, "What took you so long? We can't just get up and give ourselves a good dusting, you know. Do you have any idea how long I've waited? I do say, young people these days. When I --"

He is interrupted by a dark eyed woman, aged anywhere between thirty and fifty-five, "Where is that new frame you promised me? I only asked for one fifteen years ago and I was promised that I'd have one by --"

"--I don't see why this has to be so difficult, I mean, really, is it worth having --"

"I just need a bit of blue on my collar here, really! That's all I --"

"Shut up!" Rasalas screams. "Shut up! What is wrong with you people?!" This time the silence is complete. "One at a time," he says, a little less nervily. "I can't possibly understand you all at once."

The maybe young, maybe old woman speaks again. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" she asks, not sounding a little put upon. "And those noisy people. They leave us here for twenty years, nothing to do but hang here and talk to the same old boring mugs again and again and then they have the nerve to just disappear --"

"Hang on, what people?" Rasalas interrupts. The Order of the Phoenix had submitted several reports of their residency at Grimmauld Place, which were later published along with other declassified Ministry documents. Later, secondary source accounts had even detailed the layout of the house. Though Rasalas has read them all, even brought a few of the more exhaustive accounts with him, none had made any reference of any sort of gallery. Which would have been strange, because there was certainly more than one account of other portraits of the place, specifically the square, silk-draped one that hung immovably in the front hall; Rasalas has been careful to keep a good distance from it whenever he needs to use that particular hall.

"Yes," the woman huffs. "People."

It is now Rasalas' turn to feel put upon. "Look, I don't know what you're getting at, but there shouldn't have been any people here for at least forty years," he says. "I don't know what year you think it still is, but it's been over thirty years since the end of the Second War, so really, whatever it is --"

"Your name?" asks a gaunt man with deep sunken eyes. Rasalas blinks at the non sequitur.

"What?"

"What is your name, young man?" the man says again, slowly this time, with great emphasis.

"Oh," replies Rasalas. "I'm Rasalas Malfoy. Black," he adds lamely, the words still unnatural on his tongue. The room erupts in whispers and this time, Rasalas sees figures slide back and forth between canvases, muttering and nodding and gesturing furiously amongst themselves.

"You can't be," one of them finally calls. "The Blacks are dead. The last one, that unkempt Sirius boy, he died and that was the last of us."

"I--" Rasalas begins, and stops, wondering how he should explain this to hundred year old paintings of his grandmother's relatives. "I'm new," he says, and decides to leave it at that.

"New..." He can feel the word travel breathlessly around the gallery, carried on a fluctuating note. There is a pause, pregnant with expectation for both parties.

"I still want that frame!" the woman cries and the babbling begins to deafen before Rasalas can scramble outside and slam the door behind him.

---

Next update: TBA

A/N: Sorry guys, my computer got the av2009 virus and somehow through my efforts to remove it, Microsoft Word has decided to bugger out on me. I'll update as soon as this is resolved and I can edit my damn doc files again.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: not mine

A/N: My (very limited crowd of) darlings! So sorry for the delay; I'm sure you must have missed me _so much. _Right. So I did manage to recover my files right around finals season when life decided to stage a nice round of futbol, featuring my very own, very metaphorical balls. Anyway. Good to be back, hope no one was holding their breath, hope not to be gone that long again. Meanwhile, back in metaville...

**The Distribution of Will**

_Chapter 7_

Sometime into his fourth week of residency at Grimmauld Place, Rasalas is awakened half an hour before dawn by the distinctive, impatient taps of an owl at the shutters. He drags himself sluggishly over to the window, bare feet sticking damply to the worn wooden floorboards. "What?" he grumbles, groping for the windowpane and managing to shove it open.

There is an indignant 'hoot' and a good deal of rustling and flapping as a bird settles itself disdainfully onto a hat stand by the corner of the room, ruffling its feathers and fixing Rasalas with a haughty, beady stare as it sticks out its leg.

It's Scorpius' golden eagle owl, Rasalas realizes dumbly. Gwydion hoots again, still holding out his leg as if he expects Rasalas to present him with glass slippers. Rasalas unties the little package, which unfolds into a piece of parchment paper, exactly standard and square. Behind it is another blank sheet, the same size and shape, an obvious invitation to write back. Scorpius always has been very particular about his letters.

"Oi!" Rasalas snatches his hand away as Gwydion pecks sharply at the back of his wrist, yellow eyes fixed with what very manifestly was an impatient glare. "Yes sir, my Lord High and Mighty," Rasalas mutters, turning around and fumbling through his trunk until he comes up with the small bag of owl feed he especially keeps for times like this. He pours several small, smelly pellets into his palm and holds them out balanced in his outstretched palm, turning his face away as Gwydion pecks them delicately from his hand and picking up the letter again.

Scorpius' handwriting is very square and neat and looks like a highly stylized newspaper type; it's nearly impossible to read unless Rasalas gives it his full and unmitigated attention.

"Dear Rasalas," it begins. "I hope that you are settling in comfortably into your new home. Mother asks after you often; hardly a day goes by that she does not make some comment or inquiry, however idle, into your wellbeing. She has said that she would like to visit sometime to see how you are faring. I have told her that I would write you on her behalf and so I am.

"Would that you are prepared to receive guests, it would be best for you to owl back when and how you would like us to arrive.

"I trust you are well.

"Your loving brother,

"Scorpius Malfoy."

Rasalas rereads the letter again before folding it sharply and tossing it on top of his bureau. There hadn't been an apology there; Rasalas hadn't really been expecting one. After all, Scorpius never did anything _wrong_; he just always did things the _proper_ way, and one couldn't go wrong doing everything the _proper_ way.

He doesn't really understand the point of the letter either. While he could perfectly believe their mother's fretting and fussing about her youngest son leaving home for some strange, unoccupied house half the country away, she has never actually been the active, adventurous type. In fact, the only reason their father had ended up married to her instead of the other Greengrass daughter, their aunt, was entirely because of this quality about her. While Daphne Greengrass had refused to marry early in order to pursue her minor Ministry Cabinet career, their mother had agreed to the proposal precisely because she had had no real objections to the idea of a comfortable, if unaccomplished, life.

A request to pay a visit to her son, Rasalas admitted, while he lived in the hollowed ruins of an undecorated, dusty, drafty house was a bit out of character. Which could only mean that she hadn't been the one to come up with the idea. Which could only mean Scorpius, who would be scandalized to request favors about anything of anyone, had.

The thing about his eldest brother was that he always seemed like he'd been born several decades too late; Rasalas had the feeling he'd have been very happy in this current day and age as an old man, fondly reminiscing about the 'good old days' and going off on tirades about the deterioration of wizarding society today. Rasalas didn't even own an owl anymore; few wizards and witches did, under the age of thirty. Sure they made great company, if you liked your company feathery and smelling perpetually of sawdust and small dead animals.

After the invention of the Epistula charm in the early years of the new millennia, the care and upkeep required to maintaining an owl in service had become increasingly ridiculous in the face of near instant communication through magic. Scorpius rather vocally turns his nose up on it and calls it uncivilized and informal, and, though Rasalas normally acquiesces to his brother's peculiarities, he really can't be damned to right now, this early in the morning.

Out of habit, Rasalas taps the tip of his wand twice against the wall. Several short lines and incomplete sentences spill out but Rasalas waves them away without reading and begins to write, spidery handwriting flowed dim and red from the end of his wand.

"The lot of you can come by next week.  
I've some other stuff to fix up first  
the floorboards on the second floor aren't  
exactly stable yet. How about Tues.? Maybe  
4pm?"

The words flicker a few times before winking out with a faint zapping sound. Yawning, Rasalas makes his way back to bed; his toes curl with the anticipation of warmth and thaw after having been chilled in the early morning air. He's almost gotten the blankets settled around him when he hears a loud, indignant squawk from the corner of the room. Rasalas squeezes his eyes shut.

"Just go away now, Gwydion," he mutters, trying to hide his head beneath his pillow when the owl lands on his shoulder and begins to tug impatiently at his hair. "Merlin's bloody bollocks." Rasalas' sudden oath seems to calm his brother's owl, or at least shock his delicate sensibilities, and he ceases in his earnest efforts to deforest Rasalas' head.

Rasalas rummages through his nightstand and produces a ragged scrap of paper, barely the length and breadth of his thumb. "Check your wand," he scrawls. "Already Epped you. Tell your owl to stop bothering me."

He shoves the slip in Gwydion's general direction and his brother's owl haughtily takes in its beak and flaps out of the open window, disappearing into a gold and brown speck just beyond the faintly pink horizon. Rasalas groans, considers the effort of getting up to lock the window but quickly gives into inertia. He falls back asleep listening to the sporadic sound of the shutters knocking against the brick wall outside.

Scorpius lets his owl in through one of the French doors that divide the far library wall. Gwydion gives a satisfied hoot when his master takes the scrap of paper from his beak and gives his pinion feathers a generous rub. Scorpius reads his brother's cramped, uneven message and frowns, pulling out his wand and giving it two taps against the glass. Rasalas' script steams neatly from the tip of his wand and glows faintly in the morning sunlight.

"Four o'clock next Tuesday," he mutters as he flips open his small black itinerary, checking the time and date. Of course he can't just write it out, Scorpius thinks. He wags his wand through the air a few times to terminate the charm. He hadn't even needed to supply the owl or the paper. Sometimes, Scorpius wonders which of his brothers is the more defiant and marvels where in the bloody gene pool they'd gotten their streak of contrariness came from.

"Here, Gwydion," he calls and his owl lands besides his left hand, blinking slow, incurious eyes up at him. He ties his response letter back to Gwydion's leg – he refuses to stoop to that level simply because Rasalas finds it inconvenient – and notices the bit of parchment his brother had written on has caught in the coarse feathers of his owl's tail. Scorpius plucks it out and begins to ball it between his fingers when his eye catches on a bit of script he hadn't noticed before, scrawled onto the reverse side. Scowling a bit more, he lets Gwydion out the same way he'd come in and adjusts his glasses. He peers at the scrap, crumples it into his palm, and tosses it into the fireplace. Perhaps it is too early, Scorpius muses, shaking his head. The silly sod had signed twice.

_Next projected update: 1.31.09_ sorry, had to majorly rehaul the entire plot


End file.
